


There Is No End In Sight for Us

by strangeispowerful



Series: ~*Superpowers AU Oneshots*~ [1]
Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Basically some of them have powers but they're not superheros, Existential Angst, Gen, Inspired by a song from Tetris lmao, Jared Kleinman Is a Good Friend, Let's examine the human condition!, Mild Angst, Zoe and Jared are best friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:20:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24234214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangeispowerful/pseuds/strangeispowerful
Summary: Zoe sits on the roof of the old cinema downtown, wondering how she got all the way up here.She’s not going to jump, of course. Even if she wanted to, she couldn’t, because then, so many questions would go unanswered. Why does electricity pour from her skin when she’s upset, a deluge of pure energy? How can she sing down a snowstorm in the middle of July? When did Connor’s eyes start looking like kindling? What does any of it mean..?No. She’s not going to jump. She’s going to think, and maybe that’s worse.
Relationships: Zoe Murphy & Jared Kleinman
Series: ~*Superpowers AU Oneshots*~ [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1750975
Comments: 8
Kudos: 40





	There Is No End In Sight for Us

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this idea for a bit and I really wanted to write it, so here's a short little snippet of a scene! Based off of the song 'Connected (Yours Forever)' from the video game Tetris Effect... which is surprisingly amazing. You can listen to it [here!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8f_9aPfWpA) \- Also kind of inspired by a book by Patrick Ness called 'The Rest of Us Just Live Here', not really anything from the book but just the vibe I guess.

Zoe sits on the roof of the old cinema downtown, wondering how she got all the way up here.

Not necessarily up to the roof; she knows exactly how she did that. There’s an old service ladder in the back room for maintenance, and Jared lets her up there sometimes when the theater isn’t busy, even if it means he could get fired— which really is saying something, because Jared  _ loves  _ his job at the theatre. He gets to see some of the movies for free.

Some little part of her thinks that he knows how she feels— the tightness in her limbs, like she’s not getting enough air. When she’s sitting, legs on concrete and brick, hair rustled by the nighttime wind, it goes away. The feeling of oppression. Like a sort of unbecoming.

No, really it’s more wondering of how all of this came to be. The reason that freedom feels so paper-thin at all, as if it could blow away in a stiff breeze. Watching her brother light his cigarettes with only his fingertips, and then pretending not to notice. The possibility of standing alone in a thunderstorm in an open field and knowing she was completely safe. 

Below, the streetlights flicker to life as the sun continues its red descent into the mountains behind her. It casts her shadow long and dark along the edge of the roof, so that it falls onto the concrete two stories below.

Since she was little, there have been two things that she’s loved,  _ really  _ loved, and neither of them are her parents. She couldn’t hide her love of storms. When she was really young, even when the dog would whimper and skitter under the couch, she’d press her face to the glass screen door and watch the rain falling in sheets. The lightning was like a dancing lady, glowing and magic.

In fact, Zoe stuck a fork in an electrical outlet when she was two; Connor still teases her about it. When he gets really angry, the times that his eyes glow like coals and the smell of smoke pours into the room, he sometimes says that he wishes that she’d actually been electrocuted that day. But she hadn’t. 

Her mother had screamed. But Zoe had felt a pulling toward the outlet, and the fork from dinner looked like it would fit. When she’d fit the prongs into the little holes, a shiver had passed through her. A warm, opening feeling, like a flower blooming, or the turn of a key. Then her mom had yanked her away, tears falling in silver lines down her tired face.

Zoe doesn’t think that that was what caused everything, but it’s definitely what made her aware of it; what was going on beneath her skin. That, and when the dog died, and she ran to her room to sob and there was electricity tingling from her skin, singing her bedsheets.

There’s a sound of an opening door from behind her, and Zoe turns to see Jared coming up the service ladder in his cinema-issued red and yellow polo, a paper bucket of popcorn in his hands.

“I thought you might want this,” he says, smiling, and Zoe feels a melting feeling in her chest. There’s something wonderful about being best friends with Jared Kleinman. Ninety per-cent of him is teasing and joking, but he’s always there when he knows that you’re stuck in your own head. Bringing you popcorn on the roof of an old cinema downtown.

He settles down next to her, the street lights below reflecting in his glasses.

“Are you sure you can be up here?” She asks, kicking her legs gently off of the side of the roof, feeling the freedom of the open air. 

He shrugs, taking a handful from the bucket. “It’s slow on Sunday nights.”

Zoe turns, looks at him fondly, and puts a few pieces of popcorn in her mouth. She leans back as the saltiness settles on her tongue, blissful. “Extra butter,” she points out, and he laughs.

“I know you.”

“Yeah, I know you do.” She swallows, and a strong wind presses its way across the roof, blowing her hair behind her. There’s a silence as they both listen to the sounds of downtown, the honking of cars, the bars and clubs just beginning to gather meager crowds. 

“Um,” Jared finally says. “Are you… okay?” Seeing her questioning face, he shakes his head, straightening his glasses. “I just mean— Like, you only really come here when you’re… thinking too much.” 

“Existential?” She deadpans, throwing her head back to look at the stars. “You’re not wrong.”

“Is everything okay? At home?”

She sighs a little through her nose, a laugh. “Yeah. No, yeah, everything is fine. Connor’s just…” She rubs at a shoulder, squinting into the treeline far on the horizon. “He’s having a hard time.”

The second thing that Zoe loves is her brother, even if he sometimes wishes that she would’ve been electrocuted when she was two. When they were little, they were practically inseparable— She guesses that it makes sense, now, seeing as fire and electricity are kind of in the same vein. Even if he’s angry and impulsive, Connor is… difficult, Zoe decides. She read something once; fire is the most destructive, but also the most delicate. It can be smothered, doused, starved of air. One million ways to go out, and no reason to go on except for that of your little sister, trying so hard to find her place and failing every single time.

She bites on her lip and busies herself with another mouthful of popcorn before saying, “Thanks for all of this.” She gestures toward the city, the sky now a muted shade of indigo, not yet completely faded to black.

“No problem, Zo.” 

“Thanks for caring at all,” she continues, figuring that she’s not quite done. “No one can usually cares enough to ask how I am. No one notices.”

“They just have to pay attention.”

They look at each other, and Zoe quirks an eyebrow. “So. What about you?”

“Me?”

“How are you doing?”

He barks a laugh and puts a palm to his forehead. “Well, for one, still no affinity for anything. But that’s no surprise.” He rolls his eyes, a joking expression on his face, but Zoe knows deep down that it’s tearing him up a little. For the fact that Zoe and her brother have no idea  _ why  _ they can do what they can, it was a million-times unlikely when they found Evan in the ninth grade. Jared was his friend, and somehow, him and Zoe had grown together over the past few years. Jared had figured that maybe he would have some sort of affinity too, after Zoe had demonstrated a particularly wild show of atmokinesis with freak snow in July, but nothing had happened yet.

Zoe doesn’t quite know how to tell him that she’d known she was different since she was little. The symptoms showed themselves. And if Jared’s haven’t… well.

“There’s a cute new guy working,” he says, looking back at the service entrance. “Mike.”

“Yeah?” She asks. “Careful now, or I’ll beat you to it.”

He snickers. “You wish. No, he had a pride flag pinned to his uniform, so…”

“You should give it a shot!” Zoe says, fidgeting with a pebble near her side.

“Well…” He blows out a breath and runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. Maybe. So, not much new for me, I guess.”

Zoe reaches into her pocket to grab a ponytail holder, the wind becoming more of a nuisance. One of the downsides of having an affinity for weather and electricity: your hair is perpetually frizzy. When she’s pulled it up, she reaches out and tugs Jared’s shoulder to her. He grunts. 

“Shut up,” she laughs, and sinks into his side. “You’re a good person. Thanks for being a good person.”

“You’re so weird.” He pushes his glasses up on his nose, but she can tell that he’s smiling.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do when all of you guys graduate,” she says, and she doesn’t sound as worried as she feels about it. 

“You’ll carry on. Have guys chase after you. Get straight A’s.”

“You know what I mean.”

He looks at her, a conflicted expression on his face. “It’s summer. We have a whole year. Don’t freak out too much about it.”

She wishes it were that easy, but she doesn’t quite know how to explain it to him; how freedom feels so false, invisible. How everything feels disjointed. She feels so weak, and she doesn’t know how to rise. It might seem normal for Jared, but for Connor, and Zoe, and Evan? Their affinities feel more like curses, she thinks. She can’t even go swimming without the possibility of electrocuting everyone else in the pool. 

How will college be? She hasn’t even allowed herself to imagine an end to it all when there’s been no end in sight for so long. She looks down at her hands, trying to find meaning there, but sees none.

“Okay,” she says instead, and closes her eyes as the wind blows through downtown and the unknown stretches out in front of her, trying to anchor herself with the feeling of him against her side. 

“Hey,” he says, probably sensing a change in her and leaning back to look into her face. “Do you want to see a movie?”

“I don’t have any money,” she mumbles, looking down at her lap, but Jared stands up next to her. 

“Come on. I’ll sneak you into one of the projection booths.”

He offers her a hand, and she carefully scoots back from the edge, taking the bucket of popcorn with her. “Okay.” He smiles, and Zoe takes his hands and is hoisted to her feet, her tennis shoes scraping against the gravelly roof.

As she climbs back down the ladder, trying to keep quiet, she smiles to herself. The future may be unendingly terrifying, but at least she is here now.

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you think by leaving a kudos or comment! After I finish my main WIP, From Where the Sunlight Hits, would you be interested in this being a multi-chapter series? I hope that you enjoyed ! <3


End file.
